Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, friends!  Do you have any Halloween traditions? One of our favorites is visiting a local resident who carves amazing pumpkins.  She lives in a rather secluded neighborhood, and never used to get any trick-or-treaters.  One year, she carved one pumpkin, and got one trick-or-treater.  The next year, she carved three pumpkins, and got three trick-or-treaters.  Well, this tradition has continued to grow.  She now has HUNDREDS of jack o' lanterns on her front yard.  To accomplish this task, she takes the week before Halloween off of work, and her family and friends come from all around to help her carve. She is always so gracious -- she has candy for the kids and lots of fun Halloween decorations to look at.

These photos could never do her justice...they were taken with my iPhone. It's an amazing sight to see hundreds of carved pumpkins flickering on her lawn.

Aren't they amazing?  I'm in awe every year. These photos are from last year. This year she had a terrific Beatles pumpkin that I wish I got a photo of.  Maybe next year.

Speaking of decorating for Halloween, would you like to see my $1.10 table decoration?

Yesterday, on a trip to the dollar store, I found the white sparkly skull.  I thought he was cute, so he came home with me.  A few weeks ago, I bought a bunch of books at the thrift store for $0.10 a piece for another project.  I ripped out a few pages and ran them through my shredder.  (The book is Emma by Jane Austen, by the way.  Yes, I feel a little guilty about shredding great literature, but since it was only 10 cents, I figured I'd be forgiven.)  The spider ring was something Gavin brought home from daycare.  I snipped the ring part off and hot glued it to the skull.  Halloween decorating, on the cheap!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Fall Fun at Freddy Hill Farm

It's particularly beautiful in Pennsylvania this time of year.  I love everything about this season: the smell of leaves burning, the crisp air, the apple cider, the pumpkins, the playoff baseball, the sweaters...

The school in which I work sits on a gorgeous campus, but it's especially breathtaking in the fall.  About 50 yards from school is a dam -- I pass by it over a tiny one-lane bridge -- and the leaves of the autumn trees reflecting in the water is amazing.  Every time I pass it I slow down and try to appreciate it, because it only looks that pretty for a few short weeks.  And pretty soon those third graders rush through my classroom door with boundless energy, and a zillion ideas and problems they need me to solve, and I just take a deep breath and imagine the reflection of those leaves in the water.

Today my best friend and I took our kids to one of the local dairies for their fall fest.  We had a blast participating in all the traditional autumnal activities.

We pretended we were driving the tractor:

We watched the Pig Races:

We took a hayride:

We walked through the pumpkin patch:

And we ate funnel cake, of course!

And then we went to my Mom's for dinner, and had too much dessert:

And yelled at Mommy when we discovered she was taking a picture:

And we were all blissfully sleepy by the end of a happy fall day:

I hope you had a great weekend, too!